


Always Be My Baby

by AssyPiff



Category: Peter Kay's Car Share (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:23:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25912054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssyPiff/pseuds/AssyPiff
Summary: Why did Kayleigh have that urine sample in the very first episode? Here's my take on one possible scenario
Relationships: Kayleigh Kitson & John Redmond, Kayleigh Kitson/John Redmond
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

"For the last time Kayleigh, you must do it today! " Kayleigh 's sister Mandy was not going to be fobbed off again.

"I'm trying Mandy! If you weren't on the phone, I'd have done it by now! If Kieran hadn't taken me funnel to Basra and left it there I'd have done it by now. So my brother and sister are hardly helping this situation are you?" Kayleigh could have cried with frustration. " Look , I'm doing it, OK? I'm going to be late, I've got my manager picking me up this morning for the first day of Car Share, I can't be doing this now. "

"Calm down, Kayleigh, I care about you, you know that. I just want you to keep your appointment and find out once and for all. Call me later, OK?"

Kayleigh sighed, she managed to finish her business, wash her hands and be ready by the time her doorbell rang. She had expected him ten minutes earlier, thank goodness he was late!

"Did you find me alright?" 

" Not a bother, straight to the door. "

Kayleigh was too distracted and nervous to question why John was ten minutes late if he had really found her house straight away. She was nervous about travelling in with her manager, she had had little to do with him in all the years she had worked at the store, except for her appraisals - which he had conducted politely and fairly. She had been paired up with him, and last Friday they had met briefly once the Car Sharing pairings had been officially confirmed on the noticeboard. They had exchanged numbers and John had taken her address. He'd also asked her to call him John and not Mr. Redmond, which all the shop floor and warehouse staff were supposed to call him. 

The reason she was distracted was contained in the plastic bottle with the sports top she was carrying with her. After over a week of indecision and sheer blind panic, (and constant mithering from her sister when she had eventually got it out of her what the matter was), she had phoned up the GUM clinic and made an appointment in her lunch hour. What she was going to do if it was bad news she didn't know, but not knowing was not an option anymore. She had to know one way or another the not knowing was driving her mental.

It was in this state that Kayleigh managed to spray most of her urine sample over her boss. Not impressed was an understatement. Kayleigh had never felt more mortified apart from almost two months ago when she found out her boyfriend had been cheating on her with not just her cousin Katie in Wrexham but with a string of other women over the nearly a year they were together. They had a different definition of "exclusive" clearly.

All in all John took his unscheduled drenching in amazingly good part, considering, and when they parted at the staff entrance, he had managed to make her feel less mortified about the whole thing than she had a right to feel. "At least there are some nice men out there," she muttered to herself, placing her bag and bottle into her locker in readiness to start her day.

At lunch time, Kayleigh rushed out to her appointment twenty minutes early, having asked Gayle to cover for her, as she had to catch a bus to the clinic in a nondescript building in another part of town. There was no way she wanted to risk anyone from the store recognising her. She would never live the gossip down , and just for now she felt too upset, angry and worried to deal with the gossip mongers at work. 

"I have an appointment at noon," Kayleigh told the receptionist of the clinic when she arrived in an anxious state. 

" Please take a seat, the doctor will be with you shortly, " the receptionist was a kindly woman in her mid forties, used to seeing any number of anxious women every day.

Kayleigh found herself a seat in the waiting area, the walls covered in information posters and the small coffee table covered in leaflets, and occupied her time by reflecting how she felt about having to rock up at the clinic for the first time in her whole life. 

"Hello love," a woman leaned across from where she was sitting a couple of chairs away, on receiving no reply tried again. " It is Kayleigh, isn't it? "

Kayleigh was broken out of her thoughts by two people calling her first name at once. The first was a doctor ready to see her now, the second was her scum-bag ex's cousin, Shelley. Almost the last person she wanted to see. It was her who had let slip about Davey's visiting her cousin in Wrexham and not for the Welsh air! Kayleigh pretended she hadn't heard or seen her, following the doctor into one of the half a dozen rooms down a brightly lit corridor.

"What can I do for you today, Miss Kitson?" the female doctor who looked to be in her mid-thirties, asked once Kayleigh had followed into the equally brightly lit and clinical examination room and taken a seat.

Kayleigh took a deep breath, and not without a deal of embarrassment explained her predicament. Without going into all the emotional details she told of her ex's cheating on her and how when she had missed her last period had taken two pregnancy tests, one of which was positive and the second negative. 

"This was not how I wanted to get pregnant, if I am," Kayleigh sighed sadly, " and what if that b... sorry, what if he's given me something else? "

The doctor nodded in understanding, "I'll do a physical examination now and we'll do some blood tests, try not to worry. You did the right thing coming to the clinic early." She handed the by now tearful woman in front of her a paper tissue.

" Go behind the screen there to get changed and lay on the couch and let me know when you're ready. Did you bring in a urine sample? "

Kayleigh produced her by now severely depleted sample from her bag with a watery smile remembering the whole pissgate dêbâcle with John a few hours earlier.

The examination and blood tests took another fifteen minutes or so, and with a kindly reassurance from the doctor that she would phone her with the results as soon as they came through, Kayleigh was back out of the utilitarian building and standing at the bus stop waiting to go back to work. She made it back with five minutes to spare, having had no time nor inclination to eat lunch, having eaten hardly anything since she found out the full extent of what he'd been up to. 

What Kayleigh had always been was very accomplished at was putting on a smile and a brave face when she needed to. She wasn't in Promotions by accident! That afternoon she had pulled up her metaphorical big girl pants and got stuck into promoting the Fruit Snack-a-Jacks that seemed to be on never-ending display in the store. No-one would know, apart from Mandy and a couple of very close friends, that she was close to breaking point. She welcomed the distraction to be honest, so by the time her shift had ended and John had asked, "Had a good day?" , it was not an out and out lie when she replied, "I had a lovely day!"

John had no idea, of course, that all this was going on in Kayleigh 's life. His easy company had made it possible for her to tell him a little about her ex, it was all so close to the surface she was unable to hide it altogether, and by the end of their first journey home together, she felt calmer and subconsciously a little excitement in John's company. 

No sooner had John dropped her off and Kayleigh had made it through her front door was her mobile ringing with the distinctive, "Sisters are doing it for themselves", ringtone.

" Well? " Mandy was not known for beating around the bush, "Did you go? Tell me you went?"

Kayleigh sighed as she took off her jacket and hung it on the end of the banister and kicked off her court shoes. "Yes I went Mandy, here let me put the kettle on, " she said walking into the kitchen at the back of the house to flick the switch on the kettle. " God it was humiliating! You'll never guess who was in the waiting room?" Kayleigh shuddered remembering Shelley's delighted smile at seeing her there, and it wasn't because they were old friends.

" I hope it wasn't anyone from work, " Mandy really felt for her sister in all this but for her to see one of her gossiping colleagues would probably mean she would be looking for a new job pretty soon.

"No it was that Shelley. You know Davey's cousin who took great delight in telling me all about Davey and Katie and the half a dozen other women he slept around with."

"She wasn't! I knew she was a slapper the minute I set eyes on her!"

" Thank you very much Mandy! We're all slappers who have to go to the clinic are we? "

"I didn't mean you Kayleigh, you know I didn't."

" I know Mandy, but it makes me feel like one having to go there, " Kayleigh 's anger had vanished for now to be replaced by a weary sadness.

"What did the doctor say though?" Mandy was sat with a brew herself, having taken herself off to Steve's shed in their back garden to have this conversation without the kids earwigging .

"The doctor was nice, sympathetic you know? She said she couldn't see anything to worry about and she said she would ring me as soon as she had the results." 

Mandy could hear the sounds of her sister making a brew in the background.

"So I told her about that cheating, lying bastard, she examined me, took blood tests and my urine sample and away I went." Kayleigh started chuckling.

" What can possibly be funny about all that? " her sister really did have a strange sense of humour at times!

"Oh no! It was just that this morning...." Kayleigh spent the next few minutes telling the tale of how she managed to cover her manager in her sample.

" Bloody hell, Kayleigh! " Mandy spluttered in between bursts of laughter, " You certainly know how to make a first impression, our kid! Tell me he didn't sack you on the spot? That Dave Thompson would have done! "

"Knob -rash!" The sisters said in unison.

Kayleigh had joined in with her sister's infectious laughter, for despite how stressful her day had been John had managed to make her feel better without even trying.

" No, he didn't. He took it quite well actually. I dried his shirt off best as I could but he got a clean shirt off Diane off Non-foods, he's still picking me up tomorrow so it's all fine. You know Mandy, " Kayleigh mused, sipping her brew, " I think we're going to be friends me and John. "


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A surprise visitor at the supermarket.

The following days for Kayleigh were spent trying to distract herself from the constant thoughts that went from wondering about her test results to hating her ex for putting her in this position at her age. She threw herself into her Promotions with more vigour than she had for some while, so much so that her performance was noticed. Noticed by her colleagues on the shop floor and noticed by the management team.

"What have you done with our Miss Kitson?" Dave Thompson enquired of an unsuspecting John after the Management briefing on the Wednesday morning.

" Eh? " John was the last to leave the meeting room and was rather ambushed by the question. "What do you mean "done"? Has she said anything? I can assure you Dave I've not touched her." John had seen what allegations of harassment could do.

" No John, nothing like that! " Dave laughed out loud at the always careful John Redmond making a move on a member of staff. 

"Well what then?" John had no idea what his boss was talking about.

" Our Miss Kitson seems to have a rocket up her arse since you started car sharing, have you seen her on the shop floor? "

"No, I've not gone down there in the last few days, still sorting out this CJK fiasco," John paused, " what's she been up to? "

"You just go and watch her. Have you promised her a rise or something?" Again Dave laughed this time his mirth was full of unmistakable innuendo .

John hustled back to his office before he told Dave he was a dirty bastard to his face. Sat with a brew in front of the hundred and one emails he had to deal with, John had to admit to himself he had noticed no difference in Kayleigh 's behaviour in the two days they had been car sharing. But then he'd not known her before, only seeing her occasionally about the store and for her yearly appraisals. She'd been friendly if overly chatty in the car and he'd been stuck either in his office or in the warehouse the past couple of days. John shrugged, dismissing Dave Thompson's comments as him speaking out of his arse as usual, determined to get his emails done before he got called away to deal with some other balls up.

After the mid-morning break, John had occasion to speak to Mo the Bakery section manager. Rather than taking the quickest route, John took a stroll onto the shop floor, telling himself he should make an appearance since he had been caught up with other things, but really his curiosity about Dave's observations had got the better of him.

What he saw was Kayleigh, at her Promotions desk, with a semi circle of customers around her, laughing at something she said and seemingly willing to partake of the cheese and crackers she was handing out. John smiled to himself, Kayleigh had a talent with people there was no doubt about it, but he didn't really see any difference in his new buddy's performance. Given Dave Thompson's remarks he at least expected her to be cartwheeling across the floor or producing the cheese & crackers from a top hat or something. Kayleigh was just doing her job as far as he could see, doing it well admittedly, but just doing her job. 

John was about to turn away to go to speak to Mo when he saw a rough -looking woman walk up to Kayleigh's small crowd and say something which made several of them shake their heads and walk away. Something in the woman's demeanour made John stay where he was to observe a bit longer. He felt justified in doing so a few seconds later when Kayleigh rushed away from the woman in a distressed state, heading in the general direction of the break room. 

Thinking no more about speaking to Mo, John hustled off after Kayleigh, brushing past the woman who had caused the upset in the first place.

"You should watch who you employ!" The woman had spotted John hurrying over , determined to put the spoke in some more.

"Excuse me?" John's focus was on getting to Kayleigh so had barely registered that the woman was addressing him.

" I said, " the woman said with a nasty sneer, " you should watch who you let work here. I saw her in a STD clinic not two days ago , dirty mare! You shouldn't let her handle food like that! " 

"Have you finished?" John's quick temper was on a knife edge. He knew from experience that the best way of dealing with this sort of customer was to get them to leave as quickly and as quietly as could be managed. " I can assure you that... "

"Don't bother pal, just ask her." With that Shelley did her best hair flick, flouncing out of the store , mission accomplished. 

"I don't need to ask why you were there," John muttered to himself, taking a look around him to see if anyone else had witnessed the scene, assuring himself that no other colleagues were in the vicinity, John went on the hunt for Kayleigh. He looked in all the obvious places, the break room, the disabled loo, out the back by the bins, but to no avail. He shrugged to himself, thinking that Kayleigh might well have grabbed her bag from her locker and clocked off early, but a quick glance at the cards on the way past the back door had assured him that she was still in the building somewhere. 

John made his way back to his office, rubbing his chin in deep thought as to where Kayleigh may have hidden herself, only to find her curled up in a ball on the floor of his office, wedged into the far corner, as far away from the door as possible. She had drawn her knees up to her chest, arms clasping her legs, her head resting sideways on her arms, eyes closed.

"Kayleigh?" John 's voice was calm and steady. On receiving no reply or indeed acknowledgement that she had heard him, John turned and left the room, reappearing a few minutes later with two mugs of tea, which he put down gently into the Canon and Ball coasters he had on his desk.

"I 've brought us a brew, " he said, noting that Kayleigh had not moved. Without saying another word, John went to leave his office again, but instead he flicked the sign on his door to "busy" , closed the door quietly, and sat at his desk, waking his computer and once again delving into the emails that required the earliest attention. He mused to himself that he was glad that Dave Thompson has insisted on getting those bloody stupid "busy/free" signs on the office doors. John hadn't seen the point of him having one until now. Dave had never said why he had ordered them, but John had had his suspicions that Dave had almost got walked in one once too often whilst doing something with someone he shouldn't.

He had no idea how long Kayleigh would remain like this, but he figured that the best thing would be to give her space. He was good at that. It was the one thing he could do, it was all he ever craved was a bit of space to figure things out on his own, not that his family ever gave him that, despite knowing him for all these years. He glanced in Kayleigh 's direction a few times, but sat quietly at his computer, sipping his brew and occasionally muttering at something in an email.

Kayleigh had fled up to John's office without really thinking about it. She didn't want to see anyone, it was the only place she could think of that would be quiet and safe. Her world had started to cave in since Davey had done the dirty on her, she had still not heard from the doctor at the clinic, and after Shelley's appearance, Kayleigh had done a good job of convincing herself that she would have to ask for a transfer to avoid it happening again. When John eventually appeared she had steeled herself for his inevitable questions. But there had been none. Just his solid presence, asking nothing of her, offering her a mug of tea and calm. It took her some time to come back to herself. She had stopped crying before John had arrived, but her mind, racing from one calamitous thought to another, had miraculously quieted. Opening her eyes cautiously, Kayleigh watched John. By simply carrying on as if all this was normal, his breathing slow and steady, enabled her to match her breath to his, reassuring her she was safe for now.

Feeling like a hedgehog coming out of hibernation, Kayleigh gradually unfurled herself and got up to sit on the spare chair to the side of John's desk. She sipped at the tea he had left for her, saying nothing but glancing at him as he carefully did not look at her. After a while of feeling Kayleigh's eyes upon him, John glanced up from his screen giving her a small reassuring smile.

"I suppose you want to know what all this is about? " Kayleigh felt that she owed John an explanation, but not wanting to give it.

John looked at her steadily with those green eyes of his full of kindness and understanding.

" Not now, " he said, "You don't have to tell me anything." 

" But. .. "

" It's your business, " he said gently, he glanced at the time on his computer screen, "it's nearly lunch time, you can stay here and keep me company if you like. " he shrugged casually so as not to make his offer into a big deal.

"I would like that John," the slight smile she managed was relieved but tentative, " but shouldn't I get back? " 

"No, it's alright, I've emailed saying I need your help with something, you're ok for a while yet."

" Thank you, " Kayleigh looked as if she might cry again, her red rimmed eyes peered back at him gratefully.

"I can only offer you half my sandwich, but you're welcome to it. And listen, I meant it, you don't need to tell me anything. I met that woman who spoke to you..."

Kayleigh gasped, " You saw that? You heard what she said? "

"Aye, was just passing."

" You must think I'm a right... "

"I don't think anything of the sort Kayleigh. The time I believe someone as rough as a robber's arse..., " his voice softened, " all this is about your ex right? " Kayleigh nodded, " Well I don't need to know any more than that unless you want to tell me. " 

John locked his computer screen and rose from his seat. He's been there in one position for quite some time now and he needed to move a bit. He gathered up their tea mugs and took them to the little kitchen which was solely for the use of the management team, flicked the switch on the kettle and retrieved his B.L.T triple sandwich from the fridge, sploshing milk into the cups ready for a second brew. John was glad it was one of those quick boiling kettles so that he didn't have to stand about for ages waiting for it with the very real chance of seeing anyone else. The quicker he could get back to his office and Kayleigh the better. 

He had half expected her to have left whilst he was gone, but no, there she was still sat at his desk, examining her nails. 

"Here," he said, putting the mugs down on his coasters and handing her the sandwich packet.

" Thanks John, " her smile was grateful. She hadn't realised that she was hungry, or it could have been the emotional turmoil, either way she broke into the packet and started on one of the sandwiches.

The silence between them was not awkward but companionable, broken by the slurping of tea and the crunching on lettuce in the sandwiches.

Kayleigh looked across at John, who was pretending to read the supermarket's weekly staff magazine.

"I had to go somewhere the other lunchtime", she began.

John looked up to meet her gaze, " Oh aye? "

Kayleigh swallowed hard, " I had to know... "

" Ok... And do you know? " John seemed to know what she was taking about and she was grateful he didn't make her explain further.

She shook her head, " I'm waiting to hear... " her voice trailed off, embarrassed.

"You can tell me or tell me nothing at all." He squeezed her lower arm above her wrist supportively.

" I'm not...He cheated on me multiple times, had to check. "

"I know," John was interrupted by a light tap on his door.

It was Cath Hilton, " You still here, Kayleigh love? "

"Working lunch, Cath," John smiled.

" Can I catch you for a minute when you're done? " Cath seemed to think there was nothing amiss with Kayleigh sitting at John's desk like this.

"Sure thing, Cath." 

" We're about done aren't we John? " Kayleigh had found her voice and her resolve that with John's quiet support she could go back downstairs to her Promotions stand with her head held high.

"If you're sure Kayleigh?" They both knew this was John's way of asking her if she was alright.

Kayleigh smiled at him, " We'll catch up tonight if there's anything outstanding. "

"Ok then," he turned to Cath who was still standing by John's door, now then Cath what can I do for you? "

Kayleigh walked away, glad that John was her friend.


End file.
